Subject: [Fwd: Re: Proposed resolution: PTR queries for 254.169.in-addr.arpa]

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:55:23 +0200

Forwarded for Eric Hall.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Proposed resolution: PTR queries for 254.169.in-addr.arpa
Date: 	Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:44:26 -0400
From: 	Eric A. Hall <[email-masked]>
To: 	Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
CC: 	Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>, Rob Austein 
<[email-masked]>, [email-masked], Margaret Wasserman 
<[email-masked]>, Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>, Mark 
Townsley <[email-masked]>
References: 	<[email-masked]> 
<[email-masked]> 
<[email-masked]> 
<[email-masked]>

> By default, recursive name server implementations *MUST* be
> configured to act as if they were authoritative for an
> empty 254.169.in-addr.arpa zone and return RCODE 3 for any
> such query.  Implementations *MUST* allow this default to
> be overridden.  Returning an RCODE 3 is the correct default
> setting because it reduces the query load but also because if
> the site administrator has not set up the reverse tree
> corresponding to IPv4 Link-Local addresses in use,
> returning RCODE 3 is in fact the correct answer."

My posts aren't getting on the list and I haven't figured out why yet, but
anyway I have said three times now that silently dropping queries is
unacceptable behavior. Clients will treat such a signal as time-out error,
and will simply move on to ask another server. Eventually they will find
one that doesn't know about this rule, and the queries will escape.

It is very bad mojo to silently drop DNS lookups.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/